A Year With George Washington
February 25, 1781- Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Harrison, wrote to General Washington concerning British troop movements in Virginia and the delicate matter of Washington’s mother, Mary, having petitioned the state for financial assistance.
It appears that both Harrison and Washington were supremely uncomfortable with the subject of his mother’s strange request. Harrison delayed writing to Washington for weeks, and the general seemed utterly surprised by the news and took an equal amount of time before responding.
It is hard to put a fine point on the relationship between mother and son, but from the writings available to us now, it does seem the relationship was somewhat strained. It can be said without hesitation that Washington’s mother should have been as proud of her son as any American mother in history. She lived to see him become the central figure in the creation of a new nation and to be elected its first President. For all his accomplishments, she rarely, if ever, acknowledged his sterling successes. The tenor of her correspondence invariably revealed feelings of his neglect.
For his part, Washington seemed to have acted dutifully in his role as her son, ensuring she was cared for and writing to her occassionally, although not as frequently as he corresponded with others.
Before the Revolution, Washington had purchased a home for her in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and left clear instructions for his cousin, Lund Washington, to ensure her financial needs were met. Apparently, wartime food and material shortages, ailing health, and the serious illness of her son-in-law did impact her well-being.
Oddly, she never mentioned this to her son, who, with his enormous responsibility and the comfort of having left her to the care of his cousin, did not know of her hardship until Harrison’s embarrassing letter.
Washington was clearly mortified by the insinuation that he was neglecting his own mother to the point that she had to petition the state for help. He could not refrain from defending himself in his return letter to Harrison, lamenting to him that he was caught completely unawares:
“Whence her distresses can arise, therefore, I know not, never having received any
complaint . . .”
Washington’s brothers lived in close proximity to their mother, and his sister lived right next door. As such, he could not conceive that she was left to suffer.
“Confident I am that she has not a child that would not divide the
last sixpence to relieve her from real distress. This she has been repeatedly assured of by me.”
Washington went on to insist that Harrison withdraw his mother’s embarrassing request for financial assistance, as she presently had sufficient income to provide for her needs, and, failing that, he could well afford to care for his own mother.
“And all of us, I am certain, would feel much hurt at having our mother a pensioner while we had the means of supporting her. But, in fact, she has an ample income of her own.”
Washington would continue to provide financial support to his mother for eight more years after Harrison’s letter. He would visit her on her deathbed as he made his way to be sworn in as the first President of the United States in April of 1789.
In a letter to his sister following their mother’s death from breast cancer in August of that same year, Washington consoled her with a sentiment of gratitude for her having lived eighty years.
“Awful, and affecting as the death of a Parent is, there is consolation in knowing that Heaven has spread ours to an age, beyond which few attain.”
Nineteenth-century writers and admirers put the mother of George Washington on a pedestal of sorts, naming buildings and colleges after her and lauding her virtue in print. Modern historians have painted a less flattering portrait of Mary, suggesting that she was more resentful of her son’s accomplishments than proud.
Whatever history and its chroniclers may say about Mary Washington, one thing is incontrovertible — she raised one extraordinary man.
